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diy rope basket: under $10 in less than an hour!
I've long coveted nautically-inspired rope baskets. They look like stacks of giant sailing bracelets and remind me of Montauk, NY and Newport, RI -- all the wet-aired east coast beaches that serve lip-smacking taffy and make your hair frizz. But at prices ranging from $29 to $89 at home stores, I just couldn't let myself get roped in. (Probably not the last time you'll endure that pun in this piece.)
Examining the simple construction of one of these babies at a fancy home boutique recently, I decided I had to try to make my own. What you see here is a result of that endeavor, and it came out pretty adorable, if I do say so myself. All I needed to make this thing was five yards of cotton rope, a squeeze bottle of tacky fabric glue, and about 45 minutes of glue-handed time.
It all starts with one giant knot.
To build your basket, just wrap the rope around the big knot (and squish glue between the layers).
Don't worry if the glue oozes out the sides of your coil (assuming it's the kind that dries clear).
I love the way the big knot looks at the center, but it takes up a lot of space. Feel free to chop it off!
I learned this the hard way: the label on the glue bottle tends to dissolve when saturated. Consider taking it off before you get started.
Who can explain the allure of dried-glue hands?
Confession: I didn't wash that glue off. I peeled it off. And I loved every minute of it.
I started out by making a big knot in the loose end of the rope (the non-fraying end had been secured--by the guy at the hardware store--by a piece of masking tape). Then I saturated the inside of the knot with fabric glue so it wouldn't come undone. After waiting a couple of minutes for the glue to set, I started winding the rope around itself to form a circle. This shape became the bottom of my basket.
When I was satisfied with the basket's size, I started to coil the rope vertically instead of outward in a circle, all the while applying copious amounts of glue between each layer and squeezing tight with my thumb and forefinger. This was tiring, but I kept my spirits up by imagining all the fun I was going to have peeling the dried glue off my hands in sheets. I kept going until I ran out of rope, but the size of this thing is entirely up to you.
As you'll see from the photos, I used a lot of glue. Probably too much. But the lovely ancillary benefit of my excess was that the basket is pretty air- and water-tight, and since the glue dries clear, it's also nice and shiny.
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